A case is now percolating through the Illinois courts that may have implications on whether perpetrators of online deception can be sued for damages.
The case is Paula Bonhomme v. Janna St. James. Bonhomme lives in Los Angeles. She is a fan of the TV show Deadwood, and back in 2005, joined a chat room about the show. There she met St. James.
St. James eventually introduced Bonhomme, online, to a man by the name of Jesse. Bonhomme and Jesse exchanged emails, phone calls and handwritten notes, and their relationship blossomed into a romance. Jesse introduced Bonhomme to his family and friends via email. Bonhomme sent gifts to Jesse and his family. They planned a future together, and decided that Bonhomme should move from Los Angeles to Jesse’s home in Colorado.
Then suddenly, Jesse died of liver cancer. In Jesse’s memory, Bonhomme went to Colorado to visit some of his favorite places, accompanied by the woman who had introduced her to Jesse—Janna St. James.
But there was a problem: None of it was real.
Janna St. James made up the Jesse character, along with all 20 of his friends and family. She created an entire web of deceit, and snared Paula Bonhomme. She actually used voice-altering technology, so when they spoke on the phone, St. James sounded like a man.
Bonhomme spent money on gifts. She bought Jesse airline tickets and made changes to her home in preparation for his visits, which never materialized. In all, the charade cost Bonhomme about $10,000, including $5,000 for therapy after the emotional devastation of Jesse’s “death.”
Finally, Bonhomme’s friends, worried about the amount of time she was spending online, confronted St. James and exposed the fraud. They captured it on video, which is posted on YouTube.
Read ”˜Fake’ online love affair becomes legal battle on ABCNews.go.com.
Watch the YouTube video, St. James exposed.
Taking it to court
Bonhomme filed a complaint against Janna St. James in Illinois court in February 2008. The court dismissed her case. She filed a motion to reconsider in 2009, which was also dismissed. Then her attorneys filed an appeal.
Bonhomme’s complaint stated that St. James St. James committed fraudulent misrepresentation. The elements of this claim are:
- A false statement of material fact
- Knowledge or belief of the falsity by the party making it
- Intention to induce the plaintiff to act
- Action by the plaintiff in justifiable reliance on the truth of the statement
- Damage to the plaintiff resulting from that reliance
The problem with the original case apparently was that a claim of fraudulent misrepresentation was historically recognized only in business or financial transactions. The court had previously declined to consider fraudulent misrepresentation in noncommercial or nonfinancial dealings between parties.
Also, the defendant’s attorneys argued that St. James engaged in fiction, not a misrepresentation of facts, and that “the concepts of falsity and material fact do not apply in the context of fiction, because fiction does not purport to represent reality.”
The original trial court apparently bought that argument, but the appeals court did not. The appeals court ruled that the trial court erred in dismissing the case, and sent it back for further proceedings.
The actual court opinion is interesting and mostly easy to read. Check it out: Appellate Court of Illinois— Paula Bonhomme v. Janna St. James.
Blame the victim
The appellate court decision wasn’t, however, unanimous. One of the justices dissented, writing:
The reality of the Internet age is that an online individual may not always be—and indeed frequently is not—who or what he or she purports to be. The plaintiff’s reliance on the defendant’s alleged misrepresentations, in deciding to spend $10,000 on Christmas gifts for people who allegedly lived in another state and whom she had never met, was not justifiable. The plaintiff also cannot be said to have justifiably relied on the alleged misrepresentations in incurring expenses to move to another state to live with someone she had never met in person and who had cancelled a previous face-to-face meeting after she had purchased nonrefundable airline tickets.
In other words, the dissenting justice blamed the victim for being dumb enough to fall for the scam.
Kirk Sigmon, a blogger for the Cornell Law School, also thought the appellate court decision was a bad idea. He argued that “the world is full of misleading statements and ”˜puffery,’” and Bonhomme v. St. James could set a precedent that made Internet users responsible for telling the truth. This, Sigmon seemed to imply, was an imposition.
This holding has the potential to cause serious problems for Internet users. At least according to the Bonhomme court’s logic, many individuals may be liable for expenses incurred as a result of someone’s reliance upon their virtual representations. Mindless banter in chatrooms could now create legal liabilities. If courts apply a similar logic to negligent misrepresentation cases, even careless statements made on websites could give rise to litigation so long as plaintiffs can prove intent and harm. In theory, every user of the Internet is now subjected to an implied duty of truthfulness or due care in the representations they make when interacting with others online.
The blogger argued that allowing a complaint of fraudulent misrepresentation arising from personal dealings, rather than just commercial dealings, “threatens the very freedom that makes the Internet so attractive.”
Read The wild, wild web and alter egos, on CornellFedSoc.org.
Wrong but not illegal
I am troubled by the judge’s dissent, which blames the victim, and the Cornell blogger’s apparent opinion that the freedom of the Internet must include the freedom to lie, no matter how destructive it is to another individual.
The actions of Janna St. James were clearly reprehensible. They were morally wrong. This woman did not engage in “social puffery.” She set out to purposely deceive Paula Bonhomme, apparently just to amuse herself. Unfortunately, she succeeded, and Bonhomme was damaged.
Not only that, but St. James had a history of pulling this scam. Since this case became public, Bonhomme was contacted by at least five other women who were similarly victimized by St. James, in fake letters going back to the 1980s.
So why is it so difficult for Paula Bonhomme to get justice? I think the problem is the very structure of our legal system. Even when an action is clearly wrong, if it doesn’t violate a law, nothing can be done. The law hasn’t kept up with the technology, and the law, like most of society, doesn’t understand the maliciousness of sociopaths.
I hope Bonhomme makes out better in her next court go-round. In any event, I applaud her for even pursuing the case. If we want to make changes, and hold sociopaths accountable, we have to start somewhere.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
well put star. 😉
Although I am also offended by infidelity to a spouse, one has to remember that spaths have the uncanny ability to lure people into doing things they normally would never do.
There was a blogger here, who was straight and fell madly in love with a lesbian spath. I haven’t heard from her for a while and forget her name, but her story has stuck in my head. I’ve heard various other stories of straight people crossing that line with a spath.
My own spath conned a preacher into doing illegal things, right before he killed him. And he could talk anyone into doing anything. I remember one conversation where he was telling me how he convinced a millionaire to go buy another helicopter – because he wanted the first one for himself and that was/is going to be part two of the con.
Spaths work these cons very slowly, like boiling a frog. Before you know it, you’re in hot water and you never even noticed the temperature rising.
The way they do this is by convincing us that they are very, very special, different and unique. They aren’t like other people and you will never meet anyone like them ever again. Ironically that is how they appear even though all spaths are exactly alike!!
Once they have convinced us of their special status, all the rules which once applied to you, them and society, no longer apply in this situation. This is a special situation and you’d be a fool to mess it up by not being flexible enough to bend your rules for this person and situation.
When you are with this person you experience that feeling of being “in the zone” at all times – except when they are abusing you. Even then, life is more intense because your emotions are being extracted from you the way a spider sucks the life out of it’s victim.
Like I said, I despise infidelity, but I can see how a spath turns your world upside down and you do things you would never do.
One/Joy..
You posted a good note on this. Thanks for the link. ( 2007 blog)
This line made me tear up:
“I pointed out that when someone’s being raped and this was, indeed, emotional rape you don’t ask them if they’d like you to pull the rapist off. You make that decision for them and face the consequences later.”
wow- I wish we had more friends like that in life.
After spending years learning about my Asperger spouse, and reading/writing on a forum, ( Delphi Aspartners), it was this site that gave me the strength to walk away.
I bet the woman in this story: Paula B. – her spouse has Asp. nice guys but: we are starved for love and empathy. Aspi folks can’t provide that.
I do not blame her for easily emotionally falling for someone else.
___
This story is very similar. Catfish
the guilty woman was psychotic.
movie: Catfish.http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi769787417
made in 2010
ABC 20/20 episode on it. 20/20http://abc.go.com/watch/2020/SH559026/VD5590996/catfish-a-cyber-romance
aintgonnatakeitnomore,
I don’t know if they will let you be present to “interpret” what your kids say, I doubt it. I know there is “no telling” what a 4 or 6 year old will say. I know it must be very anxiety provoking to you to go back for this custody mess.
I suggest that you go to dr. Liane Leedom’s site, “Parenting the at risk child” and read and learn all you can about raising your child and dealing with the P parent. God bless (((hugs)))
Constantine,
I agree with your posts above…it is not unusual for TWO psychopaths to hook up and the loser cries “foul! I’m a victim”—every one of us here knows how the psychopath went into the SMEAR CAMPAIGN and told the world how WE MISTREATED THEM! LOL
In many cases, especially of SERIAL INFIDELITY, the person who is cheating and then gets dumped and then cries “foul, I’m a victim” is actually just a psychopath doing a smear campaign against their CO-psychopath who “got the drop on them” rather than the other way round….but I agree that sometimes when otherwise moral people are unhappy (especially) in a dead end loveless marriage they are “prime meat” for a psychopath.
I also think that with it being an ON-LINE rather than face to face meeting and relationship they could slip into the “relationship” more easily where in real life they wouldn’t actually “go out with” someone to a dinner or a motel, and a FANTASY relationship can sneak up on someone and they become invested in it.
There are many many con artists out in cyber-land who do the love relation-shit to con money from people, and the news is full of people who have spent tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars to these con artists professing love.
I imagine that the ones the news reports are like sexual victims, only a SMALL PERCENTAGE of them are ever reported because people are TOO ASHAMED to report them.
Paula has basketball sized cajones to report this and to pursue legal action against this woman….especially given the circumstances of putting HERSELF UP FOR PUBLIC RIDICULE.
Yea, her hands were not completely clean either, (she was still married at the time this began) and that is what the psychopaths use to keep us quiet because they know if we expose them, we expose ourselves. It is a form of emotional black mail.
Very few of us (victims) have nothing in our lives that we should feel ashamed of, or that we wish we had never done, or that is a 180 degree turn from our “normal” moral compass’s direction. We are none of us “without sin” in our lives, but at the same time, there is a big difference in a normal person’s life and their deeds than in a psychopath’s. The psychopath has a clear PATTERN of lies, deceit, abuse, and immoral and/or illegal activities in their lives. A normal person has an instance here or there that they regret and repent of, but the psychopath doesn’t regret or repent, they “excuse” or “blame place” or “project” the blame on to someone else.
one/joy thanks for the link to the article written by one of Paula’s friends. It clarifies the situation more.
I do not condone infidelity. I’ve never betrayed a relationship, and I always refused to date or havy intimate contact with a man who I knew to be involved, even if the relationship was ending. I and my first-long-term bf each confessed to each other we were infatuated with someone else, and neither of us acted on the infatuation (aside from confessing the existence of such feelings to each other). He wondered whether to tell the woman, which I said would feel like betrayal to me, and he didn’t tell her. I proposed to otherwise be separated for a couple of months as a trial, which he begged me not to do. And that was about it. We never spoke about it anymore and tried our best for the relationship, until a year later he ended it.
I was once attracted thoroughly to a man I knew to be in a relationship that acording to him was near its end. He was attracted to me as well. Nothing happened, and I avoided any intense conversations with him, until his relationship was ended. Once that had happened, we had a liaison.
And I’ve had uncommitted relationships as well, where the guy told me he was not ready for anything serious. I always made very clear in such a case that I would be as uncommitted. I must say it unnerved some of them when they realized I was not just ‘saying’ that.
But with the friend’s story about Paula and the comments by Skylar, I cannot think ill of her decision to pursue this lie. It seems to me (the blog, the friends) that Paula did not deceive her husband.
what I do think though is that Paula’s shock of learning that Jesse was a total fictuous person is not much different from our shocks when we learned that the (wo)man we loved was as fictuous. Yes, they had a birth certificate and id papers fitting the name and gender, but their personna was a big a lie.
The actions by the perpetrator in this story are especially horrific. But, knowing about the characteristics of s/p, it shouldn’t be surprising to me. This lady went one step further in her actions. Instead of simply being a shxthead to her victim, she took extraordinary action to cause grave emotional, psychological harm. Here were two women who met on a chat room. The female perp lured her female victim in by creating a storybook scenario for her. The target fell for it hook, line, and sinker. As the majority of us would, I suspect. Never in anyone’s wildest dreams would something like this happen. It takes the s/p scenario to a whole new level. Once again, this story makes a statement about why we need this website. The playing field of life keeps changing drastically in our new millennium. Maybe what all the religious doomsday folks are talking about is this”We don’t need nuclear energy to annihilate mankind, all it takes is man going toe-to-toe with man.
Before I go further, I recently read somewhere that online relationships are a total no-no. There may have been a blog on Donna’s website about it, not sure. This sure seems to fit.
What chills me the most is the way in which the perp kept stringing her victim along. Then she actually accompanied her grieving target to Colorado. With the chilling detachment of an s/p, she voyeuristically observed her target’s emotions as her grieving played out. Enjoying it immensely, it’s certain. I think this part alone would send a target off the deep end once they learned the entire truth. My heart goes out to this wonderful and giving lady who trustingly immersed her heart and soul into a relationship only to find that she was nothing more than “entertainment catnip” for someone she thought she knew and even trusted as a friend.
For the majority of us, nothing we could have ever learned from our parents and grandparents, from church and Sunday school, or just from living a protected life in the innocent world of children, would have ever prepared us for a monster like this.
The quality that unnerves me the most about the s/p is the way they are able to be detached from the interpersonal, trusting nature of relationships. They are the predator and we are the prey. To them, we are like the amoeba in a petrie dish. They poke us each time and go “h-m-m-m”…look at that. No empathy, no conscience, and no way to humanly connect to our thoughts and feelings. Then they poke us some more until we bear no resemblence to our original properties as a fully functioning human being. They are no longer interested in us because our inner light has been snuffed out”by them, we might add. We become angry, suspicious, and retaliatory. The human ability to desire and seek out genuinely intimate trust in relationships isn’t in their DNA. What brings us satisfaction and well being doesn’t exist in them. They play with us like a cat with a mouse. And lick their chops for more.
Whoa! how did I miss that the target was married?
darwin’s mom
QUOTE YOU “Yes, they had a birth certificate and id papers fitting the name and gender, but their personna was a big a lie.
GOOD POINT!
AINTGOONATAKEITNOMORE ~
So sorry you are going through a custody battle. Most likely the law guardian will just make a recommendation to the court. She probably will want to talk to the girls alone, but she should understand what 6 and 4 year olds might come up with and will know how to question them properly. I highly doubt that she will outright ask them (at that age) who they want to live with. Again, at that age the court does not pay attention to what the children want, but rather what is BEST for them. She probably will be more interested in how you are able to take care of them.
I hope this helps a little. Stay calm and answer questions honestly. Do not “coach” your girls on what they should say, that can backfire on you. Good luck.